1 December 2006
NBC News touched off a bit of a semantic firestorm on Monday when Matt Lauer, one of the hosts of the Today show, announced that “after careful consideration, NBC News has decided that a change in terminology is warranted, that the situation in Iraq with armed militarized factions fighting for their own political agendas can now be characterized as civil war.”
NBC was not the first American news outlet to use the term civil war in reference to Iraq. The Los Angeles Times has been doing so since October.
Unsurprisingly, the White disagrees with NBC’s assessment and use of the term. White House press secretary Tony Snow responded, “what you do have is sectarian violence that seems to be less aimed at gaining full control over an area than expressing differences, and also trying to destabilize a democracy—which is different than a civil war, where two sides are clashing for territory and supremacy.”
The White House would, lexicographically at least, seem to be on the losing side of this definitional battle. The OED2 defines civil war as occurring “among fellow-citizens or within the limits of one community.” Merriam-Webster’s 10th defines it as “a war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country.” The American Heritage 4th has it as “a war between factions or regions of the same country.” The Encarta dictionary says it is “a war between opposing groups within a country.” The key element for a civil war is that it is between groups within a single country, not the reasons for the fighting.
Civil war is not an oxymoron. The civil refers to the citizens of a country, not their demeanor. John de Trevisa’s 1387 translation of Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden uses the phrase civil battle:
A batayle ciuile bygan bytwene Julius and�Pompeus.
John Coke’s 1550 The Debate Betwene the Heraldes of Englande and Fraunce was the first to add the war:
Contencions and warres�amonge themselves or with theyr neyghbours, whiche the Romaynes call the cyvyle warre.
The White House’s preferred term, sectarian violence, has something to recommend it. In one sense it is more precise than civil war in that it denotes the religious factions in the struggle. But it is also euphemistic in that it is very vague about the degree of violence.
